


To Close Your Eyes

by fallintosanity (yopumpkinhead)



Category: Marvel (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Suicide, because apparently I didn't think Thor: TDW was going to be depressing enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 19:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yopumpkinhead/pseuds/fallintosanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frigga has failed her husband and failed her sons, but she will not fail in this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Close Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> (Very) Loosely inspired by Lise's [Great Ruins of an Unremembered Past](http://archiveofourown.org/works/870801).

Frigga walked the path to the dungeon with a heavy heart, her steps slow but sure. She had failed her husband and she had failed her sons, but she would not fail in this.

She had not protected Odin from the weight of the throne, had not been able to keep the bitterness and cynicism from consuming him. Had not been able to make him remember that family came before all else in Asgard, before duty, before the kingdom, before the throne.

She had not protected Thor from his father, had not been able to stop him from hardening his heart against all but Odin’s words. Had not reached him before he, too, forgot what it meant to be family. To be a brother.

She had not protected Loki from those who should have been his family, those who should have loved him. She had not seen until too late how broken he was, had not been there to catch him when he fell, nor to shield him from what came after.

But she would not fail this time.

The guards at the door moved to block her passage. They looked apologetic, but firm, and she knew that Odin had told them she was merely a woman, hysterical and irrational with the loss of her son ( _he wasn’t lost, not yet_ ). But Odin had grown old and cynical, and had forgotten why he’d once loved her, why he’d once believed her worthy to be Asgard’s queen.

“Leave,” she told the guards, and wove power into the words, subtle and thrumming and irrefutable. They left, trading uneasy glances, and she knew they would go straight to Odin to tell him of her disobedience. But Odin was cloistered in a meeting with his advisors, discussing what to do about the dark elf incursions, and the guards would not reach him until it was too late.

Frigga entered the dungeon.

She paused for a moment just inside the door. From here she could see her youngest son ( _caged like an animal_ ) sprawled on his bed, fingers tracing absent patterns on the blankets. The furniture in his cell was there because she had sent it; Odin had forbidden her entry but someone still had to bring Loki food, and the hapless servants who had that task dared not defy the Queen. She knew Odin would have forbidden the furniture as well, but he never came down here ( _no longer acknowledged his younger son’s existence at all_ ), so he did not know.

Staring at the ceiling, Loki looked ( _terrible, hurt, exhausted_ ) bored. She knew he would have long since read through the few books she’d managed to send.

She knew, too, what future awaited him, if “future” it could be called. She had seen the visions, woven by her loom and torn apart over and over again, as if she could stop them by unweaving the threads. She had seen Loki escape his prison and flee into the dark spaces of Yggdrasil, insane and alone, forever hunted by those who should have loved him. Seen him caught by the Chitauri who had tortured him, who would torture him again for as long as they could keep him alive as punishment for failing their master’s orders.

Seen the worst future of all, Loki abandoned in his prison, locked up as a stolen relic, a failed experiment, deemed _worthless_ , _dangerous_ , _monster_ by the people of Asgard, by the men whom he’d once called _father_ and _brother_ , left to rot alone and forgotten for eternity.

In none of these futures had she seen even a glimmer of light, the slightest bit of hope.

She would not fail him again.

If he noticed her, he gave no sign, not until she’d crossed the floor and stepped through the golden wall of his cell, quelling the wards with a thought. Only then did his head turn, eyes half-lidded, scornful as he watched her.

“You shouldn’t come in here,” he said lazily. “There’s a terrible monster in this cage.”

“There is a monster,” Frigga agreed softly, “but she has only just arrived.”

He frowned at that, brow furrowing, and pushed himself up on his elbows, long legs still stretched along the bed. Frigga sat down beside him and rested a hand against his jaw. “My son,” she murmured. “I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

“For what?” he asked, and she could hear the bitterness in his voice, Odin’s poison reaching even this far into the depths of the palace. “You are Aesir, you can do no wrong.”

“Being Aesir should not matter,” she whispered, and wished she could say _does not_ instead. But it was not true, not in Odin’s eyes, and they both knew it. “And I have done you a terrible wrong, my son.” She brushed the hair away from his face. It had grown long and shaggy – he was not permitted anything sharp enough to cut it – and had begun to curl at the ends. Before the truth had come out, she would have told him he’d got the curls from her.

Loki snorted, a moment too late to be convincing, and turned his head, knocking her hand away. “I am the worst kind of monster,” he said viciously. “Not fit for existence in the Nine Realms. There is nothing you can do to me which anyone would consider _wrong_ , save perhaps allowing me to live in the first place.”

She knew him well enough to hear the pain beneath the venom in his voice, the desperate attempt to protect himself by making sure he was the one who said the worst, before anyone else could. She hated that he had had to learn to do that.

She touched his chin again, gently, turning him back to face her. “I am your mother,” she said, “yet I did not protect you. I should have saved you long before this, yet I did not.”

He laughed, sharp and bitter. “Is that what you’ve come to offer?” he spat. “ _Salvation_? For a monster?”

“For my son,” she whispered. She met his eyes, green and fierce and burning, and waited. She knew what he was capable of, knew he could see the truth in her eyes.

She saw the moment he understood, saw the cracks in the armor he’d so carefully built around himself. She drew him into her embrace, smoothing his hair back, holding him tight as he buried his face against her neck, as his arms rose to cling desperately to her.

The knife she’d hidden in her sleeve slipped easily into his throat.

Blood on her hands, on her dress, hot against her skin. The blow had been true – Frigga was no stranger to the blade – and even as she eased him down onto the bed she could feel the life leaving him. Green eyes found hers and in them she could see the young boy she remembered, carefree and happy, who looked at her as though she were the only thing in the world. All around her the dark and painful futures faded, dying with the light in his eyes, and as the last of them disappeared, as the last of her child’s spirit fled, she thought she saw him smile.

The bed was narrow, but there was enough room for her to lie down beside him. The knife cut her throat as easily as it had cut his. Taking one’s own life was an ignoble act, but Odin would never allow Loki into Valhalla, and Frigga would not leave her son alone in Hel.

She had failed her husband and she had failed her eldest son, but she had not failed in this.


End file.
